


For the Empire

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Series: HSWC 2014 Bonus Round Fills [12]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Coercion, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, F/M, Human Furniture, Meaningless Consent, POV Third Person, Power Imbalance, Threshecutioner Karkat, Wordcount: 100-2.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:29:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She's terrible on her throne, sleek and gorgeous and looking utterly bored, her head tilting to the side to take him in. She's weighted with gold, positively dripping with jewelry, and Karkat isn't sure if she hurts to look at because of the glare off the metal, or because she is the thing that he's always longed to serve and here she is, at last, likely about to kill him just as has always been the case.</i>
</p><p>Against all odds, Karkat makes it into the Threshecutioner Corps, even after the Empire finds out about his mutation. All that's required of him is a little special proof that he's resilient enough for his new position.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Empire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadebloods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadebloods/gifts).



> Written for the first bonus round of the 2014 [Homestuck Shipping World Cup.](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/) The prompt was "Remember the time that HIC wanted to properly break in her newest, most up-and-coming young threshecutioner by enlisting him as her personal footstool?"
> 
> I was intimidated by the magnitude of the task but there was no way I could resist filling this prompt, it was simply too good and called to me too strongly. I consider this to be sexual content, as it's _sexualized_ content, but all clothes stay on and no penetration occurs, for the record.

-

As he marches to the throne room, Karkat keeps his shoulders straight and his head high, even as his bloodpusher is plummeting toward the vicinity of his excretory tract. He passes no one in the halls and the only sounds are the heavy footfalls of his own barely-broken-in threshecutioner boots. Each heavy clomp echoes achingly between his ears. It sounds as if he's tapping off the countdown toward his own execution. 

What has he done wrong? He's only been in training a week! One sole, glorious week, though the exercises the recruits undergo leave him so exhausted he can barely crawl into the coon at daybreak. He squats, and strains, and swipes with the best of them, and all of his trainers have commended him on his burgeoning promise for the corps. 

It must be his blood. That has to be it. Of course receiving an official pardon from Her Imperious Condescension herself, dripping with pink and sealed in gold, had been too much of a dream to come true. A sick bulgedream, poof that his addled pan has finally gotten the better of him, and has made up an entire future that could simply never be his reality. Maybe he's lying comatose in his recuperacoon even as his hallucinations play out around him, and this summons to her Condescension's chamber is simply the final crescendo before his feeble vascular sac at last gives out beneath the strain of his cumulative crushing failures. 

Karkat steps into the high, vaulted hall before the throne, and presents himself. 

He isn't sure if he should kneel. Any other troll would, if he were an ordinary peon brought before the Condesce. But he's one of hers now, a soldier, and the proper etiquette his squad leaders have already joyously beat into him is to stand tall and salute. He does, as his lungs seize up, and for a second he entirely forgets to breathe. 

She's terrible on her throne, sleek and gorgeous and looking utterly bored, her head tilting to the side to take him in. She's weighted with gold, positively dripping with jewelry, and Karkat isn't sure if she hurts to look at because of the glare off the metal, or because she is the thing that he's always longed to serve and here she is, at last, likely about to kill him just as has always been the case. He wishes he could kneel. Then he could bow his head, and be allowed a moment free from the responsibility of beholding her. 

"Let's get a look at ya, guppy," she says, curling her fingers in his direction so her many rings flash in the light. 

Karkat stumbles one step forward, then corrects himself, standing at attention. That's what he's been taught to do – stand straight and unyielding, and don't fall down if one of the officers swings around and hits you. Ha, it's a laugh. He's been digging his heels in for sweeps, he knows how to stand his ground better than anyone. 

She pushes up from her throne, long legs carrying her forward at a sedate, sashaying stroll, her hips swinging just slightly as she walks. She's up in his face too fast, and he doesn't know where to look. He bets he'll be the first jackass to get double-culled – first for being a mutated failure, and twice for forgetting himself and staring at his glorious ruler's rumblespheres a second too long. 

It's really not his fault – she towers over him, not just a head higher but shoulders and chest too. The passing sweeps never made that any easier to take. He still hates having to look up at anyone, but having to do it to her fills him with reverent awe more so than anger. She grins wide enough to flash him every fanged tooth in her mouth, and stalks slowly around him like a shark circling in on dinner. It's very much his blood in the water. 

"Got some muscle on ya," she says, her fingers sliding up his arm, trailing over his bicep. She doesn't hesitate at all. He is hers, after all – a recruit to her threshecutioner corps, a citizen of her nation, a desperately longing follower of her glory who isn't about to deny the appraisal. 

He swallows hard at the thought and almost chokes on his tongue when she very definitely slaps his ass. 

"Nice and sturdy," she decides, impish and approving. God, he's glad he doesn't have to look at her, but having her behind him has him on such high alert that his bloodpusher is speeding like a hopbeast's. "Your bettas told me you was good, shorty, but I gotta be sure you're gonna hake the cut." 

She pats his cheek, not softly, and her nails catch his skin as she pulls her hand away. It doesn't hurt, as lightly as she scratches him, but it sends a reactive shiver trembling down his spine and it takes the sum total of his stubbornly built up control not to be obvious about his childish wriggling. She's complimenting him – the least he can do is accept it without pathetically going to pieces because the pinnacle of his world has touched him. 

He licks the roof of his mouth, not certain he has permission to speak, equally not certain it wasn't a question. 

She pats his chest instead, a sturdier thump of her hand against his sternum while the other palm presses to his shoulder. It feels reassuring. It feels like she isn't going to cull him after all. She turns away, waving her fingers over her shoulder as she walks back toward her throne, tossing over them a careless order of, "Get down on your knees." 

"I... What?" Karkat says. 

God, he wants to punch the him of five seconds ago in the bulge and it's only been that long. 

"Ya heard me, buoy," she says, seating herself back in her enormous, gilded chair. She crosses one leg precisely over its opposite. "Get down. On your. Knees." 

Karkat isn't sure he understands, but he doesn't need to. That's always been the true test of a soldier – can he take orders, even when he doesn't understand them? Can he follow his leaders into battle and bloodshed and near-certain death and not shy away like a skittish hoofbeast at the first sign of danger? 

He gets down onto his knees, the back of his threshecutioner's jacket stretching uncomfortably over his shoulder blades as the epaulets begin to slide out of place. He eyes the floor in front of his hands distrustfully – it looks dusty, and he worries for the white of his dress uniform, which was definitely not made for moving around too actively and even less designed to be rubbed against grimy tile that everyone's boots had been clomping over. 

"Now come here," she says. 

He looks up a little, hands and knees on the floor and uncertainty doubtlessly on his face. She's smiling still, magenta lips stretched up to dimple her cheeks, though there's less of her teeth now on display. She offers him no further guidance – just waits. 

Karkat shuffles forward, crawling toward her a measure at a time until his nose hovers over her single shoe still planted on the floor. He stops, but he can't even lift his head high enough to look at her, not without first breaking his neck. 

"There's a good buoy," she says, like it's a marvel. "Good and obedient, just like a little soldier ought to be. I want you to make me proud, Vantas. And that means I'm gonna break you all the way in myself." 

The toe of her shoe is inserted under his chin – not turning it up, just lodging there, tapping lightly against his jawbone before she slides it to the side and pats his cheek with her shod foot instead. Like a reward for his performance thus far, though he'd hardly done anything. "Now turn and face that way instead." 

She taps him on the cheek again, pointing him to the left, and he shuffles in place. One of her heels falls to plant against his spine, and he knows when the other props on top of it by the addition of even greater weight. He hears her sigh, a whole lungful of air blown out slow and smugly satisfied. 

"One of the first things a threshecutioner needs," she tells him, like she's imparting invaluable wisdom, "Is good endurance. You know what's good for endurance? Hold that position a whale. I needed a new footstool." 

He shudders just slightly, a thin ripple down the length of his torso, and she lifts her topmost foot to tap him lower on the spine. "Like I said, guppy. Hold it still and steady. You don't want me feeling disappointed now do ya?" 

Karkat considers shaking his head, considers saying no (shit, no, fuck no, what kind of a gibbering moron set on sealing his own miserable end did she take him for?), but decides quickly that's the trick of it. She's said not to move, and even answering her question would be in violation of the order he's already been given. 

She makes a high little "hmmph!" sound after another second, and he thinks he's solved it. 

She doesn't even do anything, the entire time he's crouched there. He can't see her to say for certain – all he sees is a stretch of the throne room wall, which is just fucking fascinating, look at the finely-crafted detail on the molding, her architrolls must have been at that for ages – but she unquestionably doesn't rise from her chair. The only variation is the pressure of her feet against his back, the high points of his duty being when she lifts one to relocate it farther along his spine, when she places the other to instead rest on top. 

His palms ache, his arms strain, and his back begins to protest. He maintains the position anyway, upholds the task she's given him. 

When she's done, some indeterminate time later long enough that he can't account for it exactly, she does nothing more than drop her feet, tap his flank twice with her toe, and tell him, "Get up." 

He's so stiff he can barely obey, struggling to sit up first on his knees, then to rise shakily to his uncertain feet. Too many muscles for him to catalogue scream in protest when he straightens, and he doesn't dare stretch them without her permission. 

"Go get some grub," she tells him, even as she stands and brushes past him without another look. "I sure as shell plan on it. I'll see ya when ya report here tomorrow. We got a lotta work to do, guppy." 

-

-


End file.
